Wednesday, May 28, 2008

It's Tradition!

"It's not too often you come to a historic place like this. I think everyone enjoys being here, and we grew up watching some of the teams that have won here," said Sidney Crosby, who was 9 when the Wings won their first Cup at Joe Louis. "There's not too many older buildings left. And to be here and at the Mellon it's pretty unusual."

You had to know I'd return with an arena story, right? Of course I would! I couldn't help it, really, as the story touched on some of the points I've made before.

Interestingly, if the Wings or Penguins win the Stanley Cup in Pittsburgh, it will be the first time the Cup has been awarded in Mellon Arena. The Penguins won their two previous Stanley Cups in arenas that no longer exist (Chicago Stadium and the Met Center). If the Cup is awarded in Joe Louis, it will be the third time that has happened (same as Nassau Coliseum). The Stanley Cup has only been awarded more in one other existing and in-use stadium. That's Rexall Place.

**Because you never see them bunched together, you never do get a complete sense of how ridiculous the names of sports arenas have become. They are just brutal. Jobing.com Arena has to be the worst arena name in professional sports, right, along with maybe Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland? We aren't exactly talking "The Polo Grounds" or "Boston Gardens" here.

So, the new BoA policy is; if a Stanley Cup has been awarded in a building it can never be replaced? It can never be replaced with public money, or it can never be replaced unless its a cool new 'old' arena like Camden Yards.

I really wonder about the wisdom of putting your name on an arena. Do these companies really see a return from their investment? I can tell you that I have no idea if I've ever used the services of Pengrowth or Skyreach (because I don't know what those companies do), and I know that my purchasing choices haven't been influenced toward Rexall or Canadian Airlines because of their endorsements.

I would like to see a company try something other than platering their own name on an arena. I think there would be a lot of publicity if, say, HP announced that they were renaming the HP Pavilion to The Shark Tank. They'd still get to plaster their ads everywhere, but they'd be acknowledging that the arena is something more than a really big billboard.

If a new Edmonton arena goes forward, I'll be interested to see what it gets named. Any suggestions from Oil fans? (Besides Greenwich North and the like.)

CJ, I didn't really want to make much of a point with this post. Or if I did, nothing too deep or complicated. I just thought it was worth pointing out that some players also like playing in the older, more historic arenas, that it was neat that the Pens have never won in Mellon, and that lots of the new arena names are terrible. I also wanted to throw up a graph showing the age of the existing arenas, for interests sake.

Now if we want to get into it further--which I guess we do :) -- I understand your point that you can't play in buildings forever, and that just because something is old, doesn't mean it's good. But I guess if there was a point to make about Rexall in this post, it would be that a) there's nothing structurally wrong or unsound with the arena, and that b) that arena, in particular, has been the home to a bunch of historic hockey events. So it's an arena that can still be played in, and is worth (in the historical sense) still playing in.

I'm looking at the table again, and I think I see what you are getting at, because there are a bunch of Cups at the top of the table, and very few at the bottom. But I wasn't actually trying to show that more Cups have been won in older arenas. In fact, I initially only had the "team", "arena", and "date of opening" columns in the table, because I wanted to see for myself how new most of the arenas were. I did that for myself, in an excel table, and sorted it according to date of opening. When I decided to post an image of it, I added the fourth column, the "Stanley Cups Awarded" column, and only because I'd written about how few Cups have been awarded in all the existing arenas in a previous post. But since we are on that point, I think it's worth noting again that that column shows only eighteen Stanley Cups being awarded. The fact that sixty-one other Cup wins since 1926-27 are not listed is an interesting piece of information, at least to me. As far as I'm concerned, there are four, maybe five historically-worthy stadiums left in the league, with two coming down (Nassau and Mellon), and another one in the works (Rexall). That would leave us with only Joe Louis and MSG. I think that's a sad--and in Rexall's case, still preventable-- thing.

If I may digress from the theme du jour, anyone see Ryan Malone's quote in the Globe after Game 3?

"You saw that passion where (Crosby) scored his first goal, the intensity in his face. And the second one, you don't see him doing those [arm] pumps like that unless it's a big game on a big stage. That's when he brings his 'A' game. The true sign of a great player is someone who plays his best in big games."

and I know that my purchasing choices haven't been influenced toward Rexall or Canadian Airlines because of their endorsements.

Recently when I had a cold, I needed drugs and was faced with either a London Drugs in one direction or a Rexall somewhat further in the other direction. I went to the Rexall on the off-hope that one ten-thousandth of my purchase would pay for a tiny sliver of Shawn Horcoff's contract.

What makes me laugh is when a company goes out of business or has a few legal issues - or both - and then the name of the arena has to be changed. (Enron Field, for example.) :)

When the new stadium was built in Baltimore for the Ravens, it took more than a year to decide on naming rights - so everyone got used to calling it "Ravens Stadium." The initial sponsor was some internet company or something, so then the name was "PSINet Stadium," which elicted more venom than they thought because it was so odd and had strange capitalization.

Now it is "M & T Bank Stadium," after a bank in Buffalo, for gosh sakes.